When my mom and I talked about taking a bit of a road trip while she was here, I expressed an interest in visiting Santa Fe.  I know I had been as a child, but I really didn’t remember anything about it.  She had been several times, once in the last 10 or 15 years or so.  She was excited about going.  I looked forward to a couple of days away, which is really all we could afford.

So we loaded up her truck with the bikes, the dogs, and a cooler, and off we went.  The worst part of the trip had to be getting through Denver’s morning rush-hour traffic.  I have mentioned before how much I hate Denver traffic, but rush hour is a complete waste of time.  There is no way to bypass the mess that is downtown Denver.  We left too late in the morning, and it took us almost two hours to go the 60 miles from Longmont to the south side of Denver.  After that, it was pretty smooth sailing.  Until this happened.

This is hail.  I know it looks like snow, but this was July 2nd, and I can assure you there was no snow.  We just missed actually getting hailed on, as the storm was ahead of us and traffic was dead-stopped.  I’ve never seen anything like it.  The hail was small, marble size and less, and it covered the ground, including the road, like a 2 inch layer of snow.  There were even snow plows out moving it off the roads so people could keep going.

The summer, Florida tires on my mom’s truck didn’t know what to do with this icy, slushy mess, so we waited until the road was clear and took off again.  I talked to my dad later, and he said these kinds of hail storms are fairly common in northern New Mexico.

Since traffic and weather had delayed our travel, we didn’t get to Santa Fe until after 3 in the afternoon.  We checked into the motel, got the dogs fed and settled, then drove to old downtown Santa Fe.  We wandered around the shops looking for a place to eat.  We settled for the Blue Corn Cafe.

The food was sort neuvo-Mexican.  I had tamales, and my mom had a wrap sandwich.  The food was good, the waiter was cute, and the bill was not too bad.

We were pretty tired after our trip, so settled in for the night, and got a good night’s sleep.  In the morning, we packed up and hit a Denny’s for breakfast, then headed back to downtown.  We found a shady spot for the truck, so the doggies would be comfortable, and unloaded our bikes.  The downtown area of Santa Fe is not that big, but it was still nice to have the bikes so we could get around a little faster.  It also made it easy for me to go back and check on the doggies throughout the day, and feed the parking meter.

The biggest jewel of the downtown area is St.  Francis Cathedral.  Its stone facade and shady gardens were beautiful against the crisp blue New Mexico sky.  The church is as I remember most churches from my youth – echo-y and expansive.

The crown jewel, however, is the Loretto Chapel, also called the Staircase Chapel.  There are two mysteries surrounding the spiral staircase in this small church – who build the staircase, and how it works architecturally since it has no center support. You can read more about it here. The tiny church couldn’t hold more than 100 people, if they sat shoulder-to-shoulder and held their kids on their laps.  The spiral staircase leads to the choir loft.  Standing in the chapel, I could just imagine the wonderful sounds a choir would have made from up there.

Outside the chapel, there was the biggest cottonwood tree I’ve ever seen.  I posed my mom in front of it.

At one point, we put the doggies in our bike baskets and rode them around with us.  Willy was not sure he wanted to be in my basket, it wasn’t as comfortable as being in the basket on mom’s bike.  But he was a good sport.  He thinks I’m the cat’s meow, so he’ll put up with a lot from me sometimes.

The shops were full of all kinds of goodies.  Like this necklace that seemed way too pretty to wear.

The big shopping, however, was under the promenade of the Palace of the Governors building right on the square.  Native American craftsmen and women were set up on blankets along the sidewalk, selling everything from jewelry to pottery to basketry.  I bought lots of souvenirs there, including a pottery magnet of a spirit bear for Klown, a hand-stamped leather bracelet for the Perfect Child, and a pair of feather-shaped Sterling Silver earrings for me.  Tater got a t-shirt and a mustache necklace from the 5 and dime.  She isn’t old enough to appreciate the good stuff yet.  This is a picture of the promenade.

Of course, shopping wasn’t the only thing to do there.  There was also the great people-watching. One character caught our eye.  He was talking on a cell phone.  Every finger was covered with rings, and his face was almost completely hidden by his beard.  There were turkey feathers in his hat.

On our way out of town, we stopped at a shop painted bright yellow, away from downtown.  The entire outside wall of the shop was covered in metal art.  We spent a half hour going through the shop and all of its goodies.  If I’d had some extra dollars, I’d have bought something there.  Really neat stuff.  The guy running the shop said everything came from artisans in Mexico, even the glasswork and pottery.  Every morning he got out a ladder and hung everything on the outside walls; at night he had to take it all down again.  What an ordeal!

We left about 4 p.m. after a really great lunch at the Plaza Cafe.  We went in originally because they had a sign in the window saying they had sopapillas.  I had a plate of loaded nachos, and I can’t remember what my mom had.  Then we had sopapillas, and the bottle of honey was right on the table so we could make it the way we wanted.  Yum!  I don’t know how we didn’t fall asleep on the way home, but it was neat watching the sun go down over the mountains on our way home.  We passed storms, but no more hail, which I was thankful for.

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